Tag Archives: werribee

On July 5, 2015, the VMPRA held a Q500 and Sports pylon race at Werribee. Despite some pretty ordinary weather leading up to this day, the Sunday turned out to be a clear, mostly sunny day. Some stronger winds picked up in the middle of the day but dropping off again towards the end.

The Werribee Model Aircraft Association members were very welcoming and did a great job of manning pylon #1 and the catering.

There was quite a good group of competitors assembled especially considering some regular Q500 pilots being over in the Czech Republic for the F3D world championships.

There were 9 Q500 pilots and 4 sports pilots. The sports planes were a mix of a Trainer, Stik, EF-1 Pogo and a sports Q500 model.

Season Championship

John Schmidli won this championship for the 3rd year running with team mate James Hurley slipping into 2nd place and with Jim Orenshaw being in the Czech Republic, he managed to hang onto 3rd Place. Congratulations to all the place gets.

Trophies will be presented at the AGM to be held on August 1, 2015 at the Marong (Bendigo) event. This event will be the 1st of the new season so it’s a big reset and the championship is open for all to participate in.

F3D World Championship – Czech Republic – July 7-11, 2015

There has been a huge build up and preparation for all the competitors for this year’s world championship for the F3D pylon racing class. A good size contingent of pilots, callers and support crews and family members where there for the Australian and New Zealand teams.

It was fascinating watching the live web cams, as we could see a little of what was going on and tanks to all who sent photos, reports and snippets of information back for us to enjoy.

Congratulations to all who participated. Although conditions looked to be tough, well done to the Australian team for their 2nd place.

Individual Places

Our next race event is at the Marong field near Bendigo on August 1-2, 2015. This will be the 1st event for the new 2015/2016 championship season and there will also be our AGM on the Saturday night which is usually held at the caravan park. More details will be posted closer to then.

The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my perspective and reflects how I have experienced this event.Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.

Back on August 24, VMPRA held its regular Q500 event at the Werribee Club. The day started off with brilliant sunshine while the early risers waited for the club gates to open. Soon a club member opened up and over the next hour, competitors tricked in and started setting up planes ready for the end of the noise curfew at 9am to end.

Test flights were undertaken and then the course was setup. This included mowing a patch for the take-off area, especially because the sports planes do sometimes actually need a runway.

Les Spaltman and his Viper

This event was for the Q500 class plus a sports and the EF-1 class. Some of the more recent regulars weren’t in attendance but the numbers were boosted by a couple of first timers and a second timer and a recent returnee to pylon racing. It was great to see Andrew Arapakis finally race and complete an event flying a his trainer. Looking at his times, he made really good improvements in times as the day went on . The Arapakis’s brought along a fellow club member in Nathan Ranson who ended up flying Andrews trainer also, breaking the age old VMPRA curse where a shared plane always is destroyed in the first round that it is flown. Nathan took to the course quite quickly and was flying the trainer tightly around the pylons. Les Spaltman flew his second event in both Q500 & Sportsman as did George Angelov who is a recent returnee to pylon after a spell away from it.

Andrew Arapakis about to race the trainer

Q500 was hotly contested as usual with a return of the recently retire Daniel Arapakis. This class 6is just a lot of fun to fly and now that we have good numbers at each event, it is looking very health. It is worth mentioning that it was at Werribee 2 years earlier that our next junior representative at the 2015 F3D world championships, Daniel Arapakis, raced a trainer for the first time. He quickly started flying Q500 and along with his father’s dedication, the awesome mentoring of the Murphy’s and the progression into faster classes he is now a very competitive flyer amongst the seniors. This is a great example of what someone can do with the right guidance and support.

George Angelov

Thanks to the Werribee club for hosting this event, providing food and refreshments and for supplying helpers for the number 1 pylon cage.

The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my perspective and reflects how I have experienced this event.Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.

What great weather and fantastic turnout we had for our annual Q500, Sports EF-1 event held at the Werribee Club last Sunday. This event is close to Melbourne and is always a good opportunity for newcomers to pylon, to have a go without travelling too far. At this very event, 12 months ago, a young lad named Daniel Arapakis came along with his trainer and flew pylon for the first time. Fast forward 12 months and he’s winning events flying his Vipers and on this day, test flew his first F400 model.

Six rounds of each class on a 10.5 lap FAI long course was flown so times can be compared to previous events.

Q500

Jim scores 1st place

With 11 competitors, I think this is the most we’ve had in the last 4 years that I’ve been back flying. There was only 4.2 seconds between the place getters’ and only 1 plane came to grief (think Matt and shipping container!). Jim Orenshaw racing his brand new airframe (his own design) and engine combination came first with Daniel Arapakis only 1 second behind.

1st – Jim Orenshaw
2nd – Daniel Arapakis
3rd – John Schmidli

Sports

In this class, pretty much anything goes. We had Tom Wetherill flying his super slick 32 size pylon racer, Mike Kellet racing a Cessna-looking trainer, Ian Haigh with his 16+ year old stick model, first timer Grant Collins flying a sports low wing and Andrew Arapakis, (also a first timer) flying a classic trainer.

All had a good day’s racing except Andrew who’s engine seized in the first race of the day. Was this one of Daniel’s old engines? Hope to see you flying at the next race Andrew.

This class is slowly gathering momentum with three entries at this event.

Mark French flew his Shoestring, Walter Muller and myself, Pogo’s. All three models used the same E-Flite outrunner motors with different combinations of ESC’s and LiPo’s.

Finally some good weather in Melbourne and six rounds were flown. Mark was experiencing ESC problems (possibly due to overheating) which caused a reduction of power towards the end of each race and Walter flew very consistently to improve his times throughout the day.

Many thanks to the Werribee Club for hosting this Pylon event, providing catering and pylon marshals.

Glenn Matthews and Barry and Beau Murphy will be fighting it out for 2nd and 3rd place.

F400 – It’s really tight at the top with Tom Wetherill, Jim Orenshaw and Andrew Davies battling out for the places. Gary Davidson and Glenn Matthews also have a chance of getting into the placings.

Q500 – No change in the top 3 positions but James Hurley has dropped away from the top by 4 points.

Next year’s championship starts with the July 13-14 event in Bendigo, so it’s now time to prepare and plan your assault on this title!

Next Event

AMPRA – This is a national pylon event and it’s being held here in Victoria, so there will be a lot of flyers from interstate. This is the big event for the year. Check out this AMPRA page for details.

Next Event

This Sunday (May 19) we are having a pylon race at Werribee. It’s a 1 day event flying Q500, Sports and EF-1.

The Q500 race is the penultimate round of the 2012-2013 VMPRA championship which ends at the following event to be held at Munro.

Sports pylon covers a large range of models from trainers to low wing sports planes, typically of a 46 sports engine size. It’s the best way to start pylon racing. Only 12 months ago, Daniel Arapakis was flying a trainer around the pylon course and now he’s up there with the fastest competitors in the Q500 class.

EF-1 (electric formula 1) is a fairly new class for electric flight. There are a range of ARF models that can be purchased for this class and is an inexpensive way to go racing.

Wanted – Magazine Columnist

For many years, John Hughan wrote a pylon racing column in Airborne magazine (http://www.airbornemagazine.com.au/). Ever since John stopped producing this column, Airborne Magazine has been looking for a contributor to write pylon racing related articles on a regular basis. Having pylon racing represented in Airborne Magazine is a great chance to publicize our most exciting facet of aeromodelling. With AMPRA & the World Champs coming up soon, it’s a great time to start.
If anybody feels they would like to give this a go, please let me know.